Just like other terms in this section of our site the term Offsite Storage is often used incorrectly even by professionals. If you are not clear about the distinction between Offsite Backup & Storage check out out Cloud Backup vs Cloud Storage page.
The key point about Storage is that you are referring to the location that you store your original paper document of file – not a backup copy of it.
Offsite Document Archive
In business the term Offsite Storage most commonly refers to the removal of physical documents from your premises to a remote location. Documents might remain in paper form and returned to you when required or some providers will scan the documents and store them online so you can access them remotely.
Offsite Electronic Data Archive
For most small to medium sized businesses or enterprises the massive growth in the size off onsite storage devices and the speed of processing means thay do not need to consider offsite storage. They can keep all of their files inhouse – but they should certainly be considering Offsite Backup.
For larger organisations, particularly those with large digital assets or are required to keep electronic files for regulatory reasons then archiving is an important consideration.
Put simply, keeping large amounts of data, particularly in a database slows down the system and where large amounts of this data is not needed in a regular basis it is efficient to archive it offsite. This speeds up the day to day operations and reduces the need to include the unused data in the backup routine.
A number of service providers offer systems where this unused data can be sent to their remote servers where it is indexed and quickly available online if rrequired in the future.
Another way to use these Offsite services is for the storage of archive tapes. Your company would archive unrequired files to tape in the normal way, but the service provider would physically remove the tapes to an environmentally safe location and return the tapes to you only if required.
StoragePipe.com specialise in offsite archive over the internet, this allows busineses to archive data they are unlikley to need on a day to day basis, but at the same time offering a quick way to retrieve that data when required.
